Czech Adventure Race 2011
Survival of the Fittest
Jan Smolik / 19.08.2011
During the afternoon and evening, teams set off on the 75 km long inline-trekking stage. Teams were able to decide where they would walk and where they would skate. Skating is almost always faster so it was clear that the teams will try to skate as much as possible. However, the area is hilly and many competitors were afraid of skating downhill during the night. But the fastest teams were able to handle it perfectly, though even they said the stage was hard.
Night skating was not what stopped the favorite Polish and Spanish teams. The problem was caused by health issues. A Spanish competitor from team ‘Columbia Irontec Vidaraid’ was taken to hospital because of some sort of collapse, caused probably by a combination of previous health issues and fatigue from the race. The Polish team ‘Code 34’ ended their race after a withdrawal due to stomach problems. Another team that pulled out for the same reason was the Czech team ‘ČEPS Ekonom Praha Outdoor’.
Waking up at the race center meant seeing many sad smiles. Five teams have quit the race; and those who continued unranked have now withdrawn completely. However the weather has cleared, the temperature started to rise up to 30 degrees and the race continued.
During the next biking stage, that was 110 km long, team ‘Accom/Nutrend/Merida ‘made a big navigational error. They spent 45 minutes trying to find one of the CPs . After losing so much time, they were overtaken by ‘Czech Adidas Terrex’ and caught by another Czech team ‘Alpine Pro’.
The biking stage was again pretty straightforward but it included yet more skating. Course designers found a nice flat piece of tarmac and were sorry to leave it unused! Teams had to carry their skates for 20 km on their bikes and then skated for another 20 km.
Meanwhile the slowest teams were still completing skating section. Dutch/British team ‘Dutch Lowe Alpine’ found out they are not very good skaters. They bought their skates in a discount store last week because they had skated since they were eight. Actually they wanted to go without skates, but returned after an hour since all the teams were passing them. However , it seems they actually liked the stage as they are still talking about it and claim they improved their pirouettes and ditch-diving! The ‘GAMP Adventure Team’ had similar problems and opted to skip most of the stage. Those two teams along with three others are on the short course at the moment.
SleepMonsters
